The Prince
by vashsunglasses
Summary: Deathly Hallows SPOILERS. Set after Chapter 36. Harry realizes that he has some unfinished business with Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape.
1. The Body

**Title:** The Prince  
**Author:** vashsunglasses  
**Rating:** K  
**Fandom:** Harry Potter  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter and all related books, characters, locations, situations, and quotes belong to JKRowling.  
**Summary.** Deathly Hallows. -SPOILERS- OneShot. Set a few hours after Chapter 36. Harry wakes to realize that he has some unfinished business with Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

* * *

It was the middle of the night, and Hogwarts was resting deeply in the wake of Voldemort's demise, but in Gryffindor tower Harry Potter shifted sleepless in his bed. He thought it had been done, he had been sure that he had said everything that needed saying in the Headmaster's office earlier, but now he wasn't so sure. 

"_So the boy… the boy must die?" asked Snape quite calmly._  
"_And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential."  
Another long silence, then Snape said, "I thought… all these years… that we were protecting him for her. For Lily."_

Harry sat up in bed and slipped from the bedcovers. In the heat of battle and the flush of victory all dark thoughts had been banished, but now in the stillness of the night they had come upon him with full force. He slipped on his battered shoes and covered himself with his invisibility cloak, his Deathly Hallow.

_Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified._  
"_You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?_  
"_Don't be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?"_  
"_Lately only those whom I could not save," said Snape._

Softly he made his way through the corridors of Hogwarts, keeping silent and to the shadows through long habit and instinct. He passed the Great Hall where the final battle had taken place, and the rooms where the wounded rested. He passed the room where Voldemort's corpse lay abandoned and alone. He passed the broken gargoyle and the entrance to the Headmaster's office. The place he needed to be was not inside the castle.

_He stood up, "You have used me."_  
"_Meaning?"_  
"_I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter's son safe. Now you tell me that you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter—"_

Harry left the castle and made his way to the Whomping Willow, stopping only once to face the direction where Dumbledore's ruined grave lay, "I understand why you did what you did, Professor, but I can no longer call myself 'Dumbledore's Man'. From now on, I will live my own life in the way that I choose."

"_But this is touching Severus," said Dumbledore seriously, "Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?"_  
"_For him?" shouted Snape. "Expecto Patronum!"  
From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe: She landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office, and soared out of the window._

Within the Shrieking Shack, past the tunnel that seemed so narrow now, lay the body of Severus Snape. Pale and still, a sprawl of black within a lake of spilled carmine, hair fanned out and not nearly as greasy as he remembered. Where Dumbledore had looked broken and small in death, Snape looked larger than life, an angel in the fall of sacred. The dark eyes were empty now, but Harry could still remember their feel, more real than the desperate grip on his hand, as they gazed deep into his own.

"_Look… at… me…"_

He was lighter than he looked, voluminous robes hiding how thin he really was, but Harry still struggled as he carried the Half-Blood Prince in his arms up the hill from the Shack to the dark outline of Hogwarts in the distance. There he would lay among the honored dead with Lily's eyes to keep watch, so as not to allow him to be defiled by those who knew not the truth.

"_After all this time?"_  
"_Always," said Snape._


	2. The Book

**Title:** The Prince  
**Author:** vashsunglasses  
**Rating:** K  
**Fandom:** Harry Potter  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter and all related books, characters, locations, situations, and quotes belong to J.K.Rowling.  
**Summary.** Deathly Hallows. -SPOILERS- Set after Chapter 36. Harry realizes that he has some unfinished business with Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

**Author's Note:** Originally the first part was intended to be a one shot, but then inspiration struck, and I realized that there is more story available! There will probably be a few after this including Snape's funeral, Harry's career, and the naming of "Albus Severus Potter".

* * *

It had been a week since the final battle, and for a week Harry had barely slept. After guarding Snape's body and ensuring its protection and preparation for burial he had finally climbed back into bed, ready to rest. But he couldn't sleep. He couldn't sleep because all he could think of was the fire in the Room of Requirement and the book that he had discarded so carelessly within. The Half-Blood Prince's Book appeared whenever he closed his eyes and no matter how much he berated himself, no matter how much he told himself that it was gone, to forget it, he couldn't. 

_Cut with flat side of silver dagger, releases juice better than cutting._

He had never coveted anything the way he coveted that Book. It contained the writings of the man who had loved his mother more than all the world and everything in it. The writings of the boy who only knew love for one sweet girl in all the world. The world had been as ash to Snape, and now it was as ash to Harry as well. His world had turned upside down, shaken apart, and inverted, but Snape's hatred of him and love of his mother was the one constant he could depend on. A sturdy foundation founded upon the one man who never changed.

_"Sectumsempra!"_

And so, every night for a week Harry had insomnia, and every night for a week he paced back and forth in the corridor before the Room of Requirement, and every night he burned to hold the Book in his hands again. But the mind can only take so much before it disconnects, and after seven nights of pacing Harry Potter sprawled to the floor, a marionette with strings cut.

_"You dare use my own spells against me Potter? It was I who invented them--"_

And with him the walls of Jericho fell to the faith and determination of the Boy-Who-Lived-Twice. And when Harry awoke, cold and stiff on the stone floor, the door to the Room of Requirement was open, and the Book lay within.

_This Book is the Property of the Half-Blood Prince. _


	3. The Grave

**Title:** The Prince  
**Author:** vashsunglasses  
**Rating:** K  
**Fandom:** Harry Potter  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter and all related books, characters, locations, situations, and quotes belong to J.K.Rowling.  
**Summary.** Deathly Hallows. -SPOILERS- Set after Chapter 36. Harry realizes that he has some unfinished business with Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

**Note:** As before, everything in Italics is a quote from one of the books.

* * *

No one had claimed the body. The last of the Snape family line and friends with no one.

_Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore, "Avada Kedavra!"_

He had tried his best, but in the end an open funeral had simply not been possible. He'd wanted it more than anything, wanted to give Snape a funeral that rivaled Headmaster Dumbledore's, but after having to field off several attempts to desecrate the body, from people who he had really thought better of, he decided on a simple burial.

_Deeper and deeper amongst the graves he went, and every time he reached a new headstone he felt a little lurch of apprehension and anticipation._

And so, without ceremony and accompanied by no one, he buried the man he had once hated the most in a plot near where his parents were buried. In Godric's Hollow, which gave Harry a slight smirk when he thought of the Slytherin Head of House being laid to rest in a place so Gryffindor as this. Staring down into the grave, he dropped a single white lily to rest upon the black coffin. Then, with a whisper and a spell, the earth swallowed up the bravest man Harry Potter had ever known.

_Snape shrieked, looking madder than ever. "Like father, like son, Potter! I have just saved your neck; you should be thanking me on bended knee!"_

Hugging the Book tightly to his chest he turned on the spot and made his way unhurriedly out of the cemetery. He wouldn't dare insult the man's memory by crying or making a scene. Instead he would plot, and scheme, and use every ounce of Slytherin inside him to make sure that 10 years from now people would speak the name of Snape with all due admiration.

_Harry gripped the edges of his stool and thought, Not Slytherin, Not Slytherin._

After all, the greasy haired bastard deserved nothing less.


	4. The Facade

**Title:** The Prince  
**Author:** vashsunglasses  
**Rating:** K  
**Fandom:** Harry Potter  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter and all related books, characters, locations, situations, and quotes belong to J.K.Rowling.  
**Summary.** Deathly Hallows. -SPOILERS- Set after Chapter 36. Harry realizes that he has some unfinished business with Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

* * *

Having to take his Seventh Year at Hogwarts a year late was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing to be with Ron and Hermione and even to once again date Ginny, but it was a curse to be with them as well. They always seemed to be looming over his shoulders or skulking in the corners whenever he wanted a quiet moment alone with the Book, or some time to ponder more fully his plans for the future. One part of him, the Gryffindor part, knew that they were just being friendly (or in Ginny's case, more than friendly), but the growing Slytherin core of his being was steadily getting pissed, "Why can't they just leave me alone for five minutes, just five minutes!".

_"And Harry said last night," retorted Ron, "if it means we're supposed to get matey with the Slytherins, fat chance."  
"Well, I think it's a pity we're not trying for a bit of inter-House unity," said Hermione crossly._

Joining the 'Slug Club' was another annoyance, but it couldn't be helped. One thing he had picked up through his years in this world is that a person couldn't have enough connections. So he huffed and puffed and pretended to hate every moment of it in front of his friends, but inside the meetings he was the bashful, modest, and charming Boy-Who-Lived-Twice.

_"No, it was honest," said Harry. "One of the only honest things you've said to me. You don't care whether I live or die, but you do care that I help you convince everyone you're winning the war against Voldemort."_

And when he wasn't plotting the future, or making alliances, or communing with the Book, he was hiding in strange corners of Hogwarts studying potions with an intensity that would put Hermione to shame, "I just don't understand how you could have gotten a higher grade!" Hermione wailed, "You barely studied!" Potions was the key, the crucial point, the fulcrum of all his plans.

_"There's no need to call me __sir__ Professor."_

And so Halloween went by, and there was a nice party and much dancing but no danger. And Christmas went by, and he opened presents at Hogwarts though Grimmauld Place was offered. And then came the NEWTS, and he passed them with perfect scores in Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions, and that night he snuck away to sit on Snape's grave and tell him of goings on. And if he gloated a bit, well, that greasy bastard deserved it for making him work so hard to restore his reputation, the git.

_"Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry. "Snape was Dumbledore's, Dumbledore's from the moment you started hunting down my mother..."_

The graduation ceremony was wonderful, with all his surviving friends there to give him their congratulations. His engagement to Ginny Weasley was begun with only a stern talking to from Ron, "Break her heart and I'll break your face, mate!" His secret purchase of a certain property located on Spinner's End was discovered by no one. All in all, life was grand.


	5. The Turner

**Title:** The Prince  
**Author:** vashsunglasses  
**Rating:** K  
**Fandom:** Harry Potter  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter and all related books, characters, locations, situations, and quotes belong to J.K.Rowling.  
**Summary.** Deathly Hallows. -SPOILERS- Set after Chapter 36. Harry realizes that he has some unfinished business with Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

* * *

Oddly enough, procuring a time turner was the easiest part. Draco Malfoy of all people had been the one to point him towards a contact in the darkest parts of Diagon Alley with the item he needed, but then he knew that the Malfoys had always had a fascination with dark artifacts, and they were desperate for the support of Great Harry Potter in this brave new world. 

_"You'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."_

Every day was lived twice. He would wake up and kiss his pregnant wife, then go to his training as an auror. Then he would go home and drag himself into the bathroom where, with exactly 24 twists he went back, and aparated to Spinner's End to sleep in Snape's dank abandoned bedroom before furthering his study into Potions. Wash, rinse, repeat.

_"You said to us once before," said Hermione quietly, "that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?"_

Sometimes he wondered why he was being so secretive. Why didn't he just get right into everyone's cheerful faces and exclaim to the world that YES he was indeed studying potions. YES he indeed had a plan. But then he would catch the lingering glances from those around him every time he let that part of him slip, even for a second. When the Slytherin within him shone, the gears moved in their heads into an almost worry, maybe fear.

_"When a wizard goes over to the dark side there's nothin', and no one matters to 'em anymore."_

"What if Harry Potter goes dark?" he could feel the dampness of their fear against his neck, sour and distasteful. And Potions was tied with Snape was tied with Slytherin was tied with Voldemort was tied with Darkness and Evil and Oh No Not The Boy Who Lived! Anything other than auror training and happy Quidditch Sundays was just so out of character to the Chosen One! Unless…

_"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."_

And it was that unless that pushed Harry Potter into the dark, into living two very different lives all at once. And then his preparations were complete, both for potions and for the Other, the Special Other that would take every ounce of fame he had collected throughout the years to accomplish. His great masterpiece, or his most terrible doom.

_"You are nearly there," said James. "Very close. We are...so proud of you."_


	6. The End

**Title:** The Prince  
**Author:** vashsunglasses  
**Rating:** K  
**Fandom:** Harry Potter  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter and all related books, characters, locations, situations, and quotes belong to J.K.Rowling.  
**Summary.** Deathly Hallows. -SPOILERS- Set after Chapter 36. Harry realizes that he has some unfinished business with Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

* * *

"I want his middle name to be Severus, Ginny. I insist upon it," Harry said firmly, frowning into his wife's astonished face. They were in Ginny's private room in the maternity ward of St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.

"But Harry!" Ginny exclaimed, subconsciously tightening her hold on their newborn son, "Why would you want to name our son after him? After everything he did to you?"

Harry scowled, folding his arms across his chest, "Don't you mean, 'after everything he did for me'?"

_"The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible."_

"Harry, I don't want to argue with you. Not today," Ginny replied with a forlorn sigh. Sometimes she wondered about her husband's obsession with Severus Snape. Sometimes she secretly entertained that thought that if only the Potion's Master had survived, perhaps she would have held the entirety of Harry's soul, instead of sharing it with another. "I'm tired. Could you go fill out the birth certificate while I rest? I just need to rest for a while."

Harry bowed at the waist as he backed through the door into the long hall, making his way down to the registration desk. He knew that at this very moment, his plans were coming to fruition, and Ginny labor had provided him with a perfect alibi. Of course it couldn't have been him, after all he was in the hospital with his wife the entire time… A wicked smile graced the face of the Boy Who Lived.

_"Don't go blaming Dumbledore for Potter's determination to break rules. He has been crossing lines ever since he arrived here."_

At this very moment, two very different books were being sent out to two very different audiences. One, a new, and much needed, new Potion's textbook, used all of the new brewing techniques created by Severus Snape over the course of his lifetime. It was much overdue, especially when Harry considered how much better he had done in Potions class just by having the Book in his possession. Finally the Wizarding World would realize the great mind it had ignored and pushed aside for so long. Finally the Half-Blood Prince would receive the recognition he deserved.

_"I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death — if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."_

The other book was the first in a series of seven, one for each year between the time Harry had entered the Wizarding World until the end of Voldemort. It was an autobiography, and it was published in the Muggle realm only. Harry had no illusions that it would stay a secret from his fellow wizards and witches forever, but he had covered his tracks well and had carefully written the books in such a way that no one would have undeniable proof that only he could have been the author. The purpose of the book was twofold. It was written to help ease the Muggles into a mindset of future acceptance of magic, and it was written to show everyone just what kind of man Severus Snape was. What kind of man Albus Dumbledore was. And kind of man Harry Potter was.

_"Albus Severus. You were named for the two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew."_

_"Harry, I owe you an explanation," said Dumbledore. "An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young...and I seem to have forgotten lately."_

"_It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well."_

**Finite**


End file.
